Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 9: Gold Box - Curse of the Azure Bonds (MS-DOS) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I feel like I should write a little more about Curse of the Azure Bonds. It's a big complicated RPG, so one article wasn't really doing it justice. You could argue that two isn't enough either and I should really finish it, but... I don't want to.

Like Pool of Radiance, the game was released on a ton of systems: IBM PC, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, the venerable Apple II, Apple Macintosh, NEC PC-98. Not the NES this time though; the Gold Box RPGs never returned to the console. And D&D was done with the Sharp X1 and PC-88 entirely by this point.

On the plus side, the Atari ST got a port this time! Their first and only Gold Box game. It's a shame that ST owners were left out after this, as it was one of the higher spec machines of the '80s and its weakness with scrolling backgrounds wasn't a problem for these turn based RPGs.

Alright, if you want to return to part one then CLICK HERE. If you want to see a list of all the Dungeons & Dragons games I've covered CLICK HERE. And if you want some Curse of the Azure Bonds spoilers then you're already in the right place.

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Previously, in Curse of the Azure Bonds:

The heroes of Pool of Radiance woke up in a hotel room with amnesia and matching tattoos, but what they did last night became far less of a concern than what they were about to do next. The tattoos turned out to be magic bonds that compelled them to assassinate the king! They messed that up, got arrested, got broken out by thieves, and then were immediately attacked by other assassins who had incidentally kidnapped the king's daughter.

So the heroes set off through the sewers on a mission to beat up the Fire Knives, rescue the king's daughter, and find a way to remove the azure bonds. It went badly due to player error, but I reckon I can do better next time. Right after I've hiked back to the secret sewer trainer and levelled everyone up.

And now, the continuation:

Alright, Constantine has become a level 5 magic-user!

Now I have to look at this huge list of spells and decide which of them is most likely to turn the tide of battle. It would probably help if I read all the descriptions in the manual.

Hey, I've got 3rd level spells now, that's new... and one of them is FIREBALL! Oh fireball my old friend, I have missed you. We had so much fun together in Baldur's Gate. I became able to visualise exactly where to cast it so it hit all the enemies without even singeing my team's eyebrows... which I wouldn't have had to do if the game just had an AOE indicator, but whatever.

Curse of the Azure Bonds also has friendly fire and no indication of where a spell is going to land, so this is going to be a learning process.

Now I'm going to go back to where the Fire Knives are holding the princess and I'm going to try the boss battle again. With so many enemies packed into such a small space it'll be an excellent test site for me to start fireball trials.

They hit Constantine got hit he was still casting and he lost the spell! No fireball. Well, I've still got plenty of casts of stinking cloud for them! Every turn I hit another four tiles with noxious green smoke and with a bit of luck at least one of the people standing there will be coughing too much to fight back.

Yeah, this went way better this time. I finished this epic boss battle with my team still standing and got 6670 XP for it! This shows how much of a game-changer a single magic-user can be, as they can make an army stunned and helpless. I just have to get them standing in the right place to cast their spell.

The Fire Knives have been defeated, the first azure bond is removed, and I've got journal entries 54 and then 53 to read. More entries to add to the pile I already have. I really will get around to them in a bit, I'm just getting through these cutscenes first.

I'm really surprised that I've already gotten rid of one of the five bonds in the first dungeon. That was way faster than I expected (though the animation was annoyingly slow so I sped it up for you).

Oh, we're having creepy dreams now, with actual artwork. I like the dramatic lighting, it accentuates their contemptuousness.

It's interesting that these cutscenes are from the perspective of a protagonist - it says that "four faces leer down at you". But I'm controlling six people, so which one of them is having the nightmares? Who is 'you'?

Pool of Radiance (MS-DOS)

Alright I've finally reached the world map! That wasn't so bad as these things go; I was trapped way longer in Midgar in Final Fantasy VII and Taris in Knights of the Old Republic.

Though this is actually a screenshot from the first game, Pool of Radiance, showing my heroes riding to the city of Phlan on their horses. You can't really see where you're going in this because of the tiny window, but you can at least ride in any direction you want.

And here's the map screen I just reached in Curse of the Azure Bonds. They've changed it entirely! This time it's more like Hillsfar, where instead of riding around the map you pick the route you want to take from a list. Except this is zoomed out even further.

I'm currently in Tilverton, way down at the bottom left, and those two dots in the top right are Phlan and Hillsfar. I thought I'd finally gotten out of the Moonsea region, but it's still just about hanging on there at the edge.

The towns aren't actually labelled, but it's fine as I don't know where I'm going anyway. Perhaps I'll head down to Hillsfar and see how the place looks these days. It doesn't seem like there is a road to Phlan, so maybe they just stuck that marker on the map to make the fans happy. Or it could be that I get there by boat, like in the first game.

Oh damn, wilderness tiles! It's so weird seeing rocks and trees and bits of grass in the background instead of it being entirely grey. Those tree branches complicate things though, as they block my way. Not the tree trunks, only the branches. 

Man I really don't need this battle right now. I just want to get back to civilisation already, get my loot identified, and restock my arrows. I haven't seen the inside of a shop since everything first kicked off. But these displacer beasts just had to interrupt me while I was travelling. Fortunately they're not as dangerous as they look. 

That's weird, Shadowdale is just a menu. I expected there to be streets I could walk around like in Tilverton. Well at least this means I don't have to find the shop.

I assumed that I'd spent the last of my cash on training as I haven't been overly encumbered by coin for a while, but it turns out I've got just enough left to get all this magical loot ID'd. And I'll have even more money when I sell all the +1 rated magical gear I don't need.

Oh damn, the shopkeeper's identified one of my mystery long swords as a 'long sword +3 frost brand'! I'll take that. I was less impressed by them failing to tell me that the bracers I'd picked up were cursed.

I'm having to use the internet to find descriptions for some of these items as the game itself will never tell me, and it turns out I've got some good stuff here. Like I've got a red Ioun stone that boosts dexterity by +1 and elven chain armour that even thieves can use! They can both go on Selina to get her ridiculously high armour class score down.

Alright, this seems like a nice quiet moment to read some journal entries at last. Here's what happened when we ran into the room where the princess was being held prisoner by the leader of the Fire Knives:

Oh wow, so that's why the Fire Knives leader didn't just mind control us with the azure bonds! Damn princess, I'm glad I declared my allegiance to you now.

And here's what happened right after the fight:

Princess Nacacia got him to remove the Fire Knives bond as well! It seems that on the 'effective princess' scale, she's much closer to Princess Leia than to Princess Daphne. 

(That's the princess from the Dragon's Lair games who mostly just waits for Dirk the Daring to save her. I was going to say Princess Peach, seeing as she's always being dragged to one of Bowser's castles, but then I remembered she's been a playable hero since 1988. Plus any princess who does kart racing has at least moderate effectiveness.)

Finally, this is what happened when the Fire Knives lair started shaking:

We saved her? I remember this very differently. Though I suppose killing all the enemy ninjas for her helped.

The journal also mentions that the king has banned the team from all Cormyr lands due to them a: trying to kill him, and b: having an arm full of magic bonds that'll make them do it again. I suppose that's fair, but it does mean we can never go back to Tilverton again.

I could go over to check out Hillsfar though!

In fact I could export my heroes, import them into the game Hillsfar, play that for a bit, and then bring them back again afterwards with some extra levels.

But I won't.

We got ambushed again, so I finally got to cut loose with fireball! It didn't look as impressive as I'd hoped, but it did a decent bit of damage. 20 HP is half a fighter's health at this level. Unfortunately he's only capable of memorising one shot and now he's got the full attention of a dozen pissed off enemies.

It turned out fine actually, as no one on either side knows how to use swords yet at this level; they just wave them around and hope they eventually hit someone. Though it got way easier for my guys to hit them after a few casts of stinking cloud and hold person left them frozen and helpless. 

Here's what's really bothering me: why the hell are we fighting out in the wilderness? We're on a boat right now! We got boarded by buccaneers in the middle of the Moonsea, on the way to visit the recently reclaimed city of Phlan.

Look, I'm back in Phlan! It's another three-duck menu town like Shadowdale. Hillsfar too, actually. So that's a bit disappointing. I hope this isn't true of all the towns, otherwise exploring the world is going to feel pretty pointless.

I risked going to the bar and had a drink, because it was either that or hang around here looking at the ducks. Fortunately the place is much quieter these days and instead of getting into a fight against 3 million thieves I overhead a tavern tale. Hang on, I just need to look up what it was.

Poor city clerk, she used to have a purpose in her life, giving us missions, but now that Phlan has been reclaimed from the monsters there's nothing left for her to do. She's a quest giver without quests. 

(I accidentally put the wrong entry on screen at first, before I realised I'd clicked on journal entry 25 instead of tavern tale 25. I don't think Gold Box Companion does tavern tales, so you have to get your adventurer's journal booklet or PDF out for those ones.)

Well if the clerk's not going to give me a quest, then I'm kind of lost right now. I think I'll need to check the cluebook and look up what I'm supposed to be doing next, because I haven't a clue. I'm sure someone must have mentioned it at some point, but I have zero memory of it and I can't check in-game.

Wait, there was that sage at the start of the game, the one I paid half my money to. What did she tell me about the bonds?

From the manual

Okay, one bond is from the Fire Knives of Tilverton, but I've sorted them out already. One is the symbol of the evil god Moander who was last seen in the city of Yulash. The Z in the triangle is the mark of the Zhentarim from Zhentil Keep. The crescent moon looks like the symbol of a sage from Shadowdale. And she didn't know what the last symbol is.

I have three places to look, and Zhentil Keep is right next to Phlan so it seems like the best place to start. Actually Shadowdale seems like the best place to start, because it's closer to Tilverton and presumably lower level, but screw it, I'm already here. If Zhentil Keep turns out to be too tough for me I can always just run away... hopefully.

ZHENTIL KEEP

Zhentil Keep kind of sucks!

It's a proper town, not just a menu, but it's basically one narrow road lined with locked doors and everyone here hates us. They've been whispering, rushing indoors, dropping rotten food out of their windows on us. Even the dog peed on us. I've been running a gauntlet of these messages, they appear every step or two. 

I've been leaving most of the doors alone, I don't want to break into someone's house, but I did visit the shop and the inn. I also got a chance to chat to some mages in the street, with the same "Haughty, Sly, Nice, Meek and Abusive" choices as in Pool of Radiance. I went with 'Meek'. 

"We are but humble heroes, we want no trouble, oh wise and powerful magicians. Just let us get a little closer so your vital organs are in stabbing range." is how I imagine it went, because when combat started I was standing nose to nose with them. They didn't get a spell off.

Trouble is that fights can get a bit repetitive when there's a shop nearby. What I mean is, you can rush back to sell their loot, get into another fight in the same street, rush back to sell their loot again, and so on. It's not a loop I want to get caught in, I'm not here to do grinding!

0 gold pieces for my             sounds like a fair deal. I mostly just want this pile of nothing out of my inventory, in case the game gets more glitched and it starts eating up my other items. I'm sure this character should've been carrying a lot more loot from that last battle.

I'm actually pretty loaded with cash right now. Seriously, some of my weaker characters can barely walk three tiles a turn right now. Fortunately a shop here in Zhentil Keep actually sells things more valuable than 10 gold long swords and glaive-guisarmes, so I've finally got something to spend it on. 

I'm just not convinced yet that I want to spend all my coin on a 12,000 gold single-use javelin. Plus health potions being 3,200 gold each explains why I never find any.

TEMPLE OF BANE

I met a mysterious halfling called Olive Ruskettle who's presumably from the Azure Bonds novel. Trouble is I've never read it, so I don't know if she's lying when she says she's friends with its protagonist Alias.

She has gotten us into the Temple of Bane though, so now we're one step closer to getting the next bond removed. We're apparently meant to be looking for a human sage called Dimswart, who's held prisoner somewhere inside.

Oh he's right here behind this door at the start. That was simple. And finding him gets me journal entry 12.

Bloody hell! Did Hideo Kojima write this journal entry? They're usually only a paragraph or two long.

Seems that while I'm getting rid of the bonds I also need to keep an eye out for three magical items that need to be taken to the legendary Pool of Radiance, starting with the Amulet of Lathander. Plus I need to rescue Dimswart and find my way back out of this temple.

Damn, I starting to think I should've played one of the other chapters first, as the random encounters in this temple are much tougher than I'm used to and there are so many of them.

I've been using my cleric's 'hold person' spell to swing the odds in my favour, as it can paralyse up to three enemies, and then those enemies can be knocked out in a single hit. The trouble is that the enemy clerics have the spell too and I'm fighting four of them here. Two clerics could paralyse my team with one spell each, so four is just overkill! My only defence is to successfully hit all of them before any of them can make a move, preventing them from casting magic that turn. You can see how well that's been going for me.

It's not that I'm stuck, I can beat these random encounters, but I'm so beat up afterwards that I have to run back to the safety of Dimswart's cell to recover, so progress has been slow. And if I try having fun exploring for treasure I'll just end up fighting even more of these battles and get nowhere even faster!

Oh, it appears that I've run into the plot. Hey, don't I know you from Doom?

I met beholders like Dexam in one of the Baldur's Gate games and I remember them being a pain in the ass. They fire off magic spells at you from their many eyes and none of them the good kind, so I'm really not ready for a boss fight against him right now.

Fortunately he's not interested in fighting the team either, as he's actually from a faction that opposes the folks who put the bonds on them! He just wants to run extremely long and painful experiments on the heroes to find out how the bonds work.

But then Fzoul Chembryl, high lord of the Dark Shrine, bursts in! He's one of the four faces that were leering down at me earlier, the one with the moustache, and he doesn't much like Dexam either.

Fzoul has been collecting lawful good magical items but no one in his evil cult can wield them, so his sinister plan is to use the bonds to make the heroes pick them up! Then he can order the well-armed team to carry out his wishes and they'll have no choice but to obey for as long as he lives. Dexam immediately spots the loophole there, and blasts Fzoul into a pile of ash! RIP. His bond vanishes from my characters' arms just like the Fire Knives one did. Two down, three to go.

Now there's a bit of a civil war going on in the temple between Fzoul's troops and Dexam's forces, so I need to make a run for it before my ass gets kicked by one side or the other. I'll have to remember to grab the Amulet of Lathander later.

Man, these fights aren't getting any easier. Which makes sense I guess, as I can't level up until after I escape the temple.

I'm good enough to beat anything they've been throwing at me, but only barely, and it takes every decent spell I have. I have to rest after every battle to recover health and magic. Unfortunately I can't run back to Dimswart's cell for a nap any more, so there's a good chance my rest will be interrupted.

The quickest way to deal with being woken up early seems to be to turn the game off and boot it back up again to load the last save. At least it's quicker than waiting for them to kill my wounded powerless heroes and kick me back to the menu screen.

SEVERAL BATTLES LATER

Oh come on! Seriously game, what part of 'I can't fight until you've let me rest' do you not understand? I. CAN'T. FIGHT. THESE. ENEMIES. This is pointless, two of my heroes are knocked out, I have no spells, all I can do is quit and reload the last save. Again.

Also what the hell is this creature? It's like a lion-bat-wizard monster. He must be so frustrated trying to do anything without opposable thumbs.

You know what, I give up. I clearly came to Zhentil Keep too early, I'm not ready for this, and I certainly don't have the patience for it. I'm going to load my backup save I made a few hours ago and try going somewhere else.

I went to Shadowdale to look for the sage, but it's a menu town so I found nothing. Though it occurred to me to try having a drink, and a man at the tavern told me to go to Ashabenford and then keep heading south.

This brought me to the Standing Stones, where I ran into the bridge keeper from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. No, seriously, he's got the three questions and everything. I thought Fallout was the series with the pop culture references. 

Though the question he really wanted answering... was the copy protection! C'mon game, I have to do this every time I start the game up, I passed the test already. (Fortunately the Steam version is cracked, so I just type anything and it lets me through).

THE VILLAGE OF HAP

Alright, I've found the start of the Hap chapter, and this place has a proper town I can walk around in too! Unfortunately it's a town without any kind of shops or training hall, so I'll need to return to the world map once I've gotten enough loot and XP.

Once again there are enemies wandering the streets that I can parlay with, and it's pretty easy to avoid fighting altogether if I say something nice. Though there's no way to avoid breaking into people's houses and scaring them, as I need to find the bad guy HQ.

Most buildings contain cringing peasants, though I did meet Akabar Bel Akash in the inn. This is another one of Alias' friends from the book and he's a level 5 magic-user, same as Constantine, with all the same spells! I feel like I've finally reached a part of the game appropriate for my level.

Oh damn, I found a barn with enemies in and they just obliterated me! Zhentil Keep was easier than this, because at least there I wasn't fighting dark elves.

You see, the gimmick that dark elves have, the thing that makes them stand out from regular enemies, is that they're MAGIC RESISTANT. This absolute troll of a game gave me a magic-user NPC in a town full of enemies you can't hit with magic. I might have found it funny, except Zhentil Keep put me in a bad mood and I really needed a couple of wins here.

This was supposed to be the easy chapter.

Okay, I've checked a walkthrough and it says that I can kill the patrols outside to make this fight easier. Sounds good, let's do that.

BUT THEN, IN THE STREET...

Constantine, no, what are you doing! I didn't turn the 'automatically use magic' option on! Did I?

This started off as a fight against a dark elf patrol, and I was actually doing well. I killed most of the group and once victory was inevitable I switched autobattle on to allow my team to handle the clean up on their own. So Constantine decided it was time to get out the Necklace of Missiles he was carrying, which apparently casts fireball! On my OWN FUCKING TEAM.

I am just... I don't even... 

Please, game, give me a win. Let me win a fight. I am so so tired of turning the game off and booting it back up again every time someone dies. I stopped having fun a long time back, and now I just want to complete one quest so I can turn the game off.

SOON

Good news, I defeated the dark elves in the barn and freed the town! Now I just have to run over to the next town to get my loot ID'd and sell what I don't need. Wait, my loot just disintegrated.

I've played Baldur's Gate 2, I already know that dark elf gear degrades in sunlight and that dropping your old gear is a really bad idea, but... it was daytime in town when I got it. Why was leaving Hap the trigger to make it disappear?

Never mind, it's not a problem. Dark elf equipment is really good, but if there are any more battles around Hap the enemies will drop some more, and if there aren't any battles then I have no use for it anyway. Wait, Akabar Bel Akash disappeared on me too! Okay, fine, I get the point: I can't leave Hap until the chapter is over.

DRACOLICH CAVE

Man, even with this amazing drow gear equipped we're still missing enemies all the time. At least these Salamanders are weak to some magic, so Akabar isn't entirely pointless. Though I mostly use him to bandage up fallen characters, so no one useful has to waste a turn.

This Dracolich cave near to Hap is another example of troll game design as there are plenty of rooms to explore. Trouble is that most of them have a dozen enemies training inside, and if you encounter a dozen clerics then you're just dead. You're not winning that fight. So I have to not enter rooms.

Actually I should check a walkthrough to see if there's anything important here I could miss.

Turns out that there's a woman here who offers to make one of your female characters a swanmay! This has to be the first time in a Gold Box RPG that having a female character on the team has given me any kind of benefit.

One question though: what's a swanmay?

Okay, I've looked it up and swanmays have the ability to transform into swans! They can also charm people, speak to animals and plants, and have a resistance to weapons. But you don't get any of that in this game.

The last fight at the end of the caves is against a bloody dragon skeleton. No one warned me I'd be facing a dragon in this D&D game! I could just surrender, the game would apparently carry on fine and I'm not really at a high enough level to start fights with dragons, but... nah. I've got 'resist fire' spells, let's do this.

My first move is to get everyone separated so they're not all hit by the same breath attack. My second move is to restart the game because I accidentally walked away from the dragon instead of walking around it, and my unit got straight up killed by the disengagement attack. Can't put a bandage on that.

It took four attempts but I took Crimdrac down with a barrage of magic missiles, and Akabar Bel Useless delivered the killing blow! Unfortunately I forgot to record it because of all the restarts, so you'll just have to take my word on it.

WIZARD'S TOWER

Whether you surrender or not you're still brought to the Wizard's Tower, where you're at the mercy of the Red Wizard Dracandros. I remember meeting a Red Wizard in Baldur's Gate... he was a dick too.

The roof is covered in black dragons and Dracandros puts on a show for them, using the bonds to force the party to attack an illusionary dragon. He tells the dragons that the heroes are pawns of the good sage Elminster, sent to destroy all dragon kind! Okay, I'm not sure what his endgame is here, but this isn't the way I expected this to go.

The dragons tell him to release the bonds so they can see what the heroes do when they get their free will back. They're not overly concerned about the danger to themselves, because they're giant dragons and massively outnumber us, and they want to know the truth. So Dracandros reluctantly gets rid of his bond! Three down! Wait, I loaded my game and lost all my progress at Zhentil Keep, so it's only two down. Still, I'm making progress.

I decided not to attack the dragons, so Dracandros made a run for it down the stairs. I followed him down and ran into... a single dark elf lord.

Man, I thought the other fights were tough, but they're nothing compared to this guy.

I've tried throwing spell after spell at the man, magic missile, hold person, poison, nothing has any effect. I don't think the necklace of missiles is going to help here. Plus healing magic is always next to useless, and everyone's got 'bless', 'prayer', and all the 'enlarge' and 'protection from evil' I can give them. I even drank a strength potion.

The walkthrough suggests using high-damage backstabs with my thief, and I'm trying to! I've got people attacking from the front so she can put a sword into his back. But for it to work, the guy in front has to make a successful hit and then she has to follow it up with another successful hit, so there are a lot of virtual dice rolls going on and the odds aren't in my favour.

SIXTEEN TRIES LATER

Holy shit I actually did it!

16 tries that took in the end! Each time I had to quit the game, load it up again, skip past the title screen, load my save and so on. But I actually did it, and only one character was knocked out... Ivy, my cleric. So I can't actually heal everyone and continue, but other than that I'm doing well!

I have a feeling that if I rest for long enough she'll recover a hit point on her own, and that's all I need for her to start casting healing spells, so I'm going to go back upstairs and try that. Just as soon as I've claimed my hard-earned loot!

What?

Oh this game is taking the piss right now. It's thrown me right into a second fight with no chance to save or heal first.

That victory over the dark elf lord was downright miraculous, I couldn't have hoped to come out of it with so many characters still active, but I am clearly in no state to fight this battle right now. I'll give it my best shot though, because what else can I do? Rage quit?

Well it's over now. Clark got killed by a lightning bolt spell. Not knocked out, killed.

There's no bloody way I'm fighting the dark elf lord 16 more times to give this a second try and I'm trapped on this tower, so that's it then. My trip to Hap went as badly as my visit to Zhentil Keep. Game over.


CONCLUSION

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I'm afraid that I cannot fully recommend Curse of the Azure Bonds at this time, because I want to reach my hands around its neck and strangle the life out of it. I should've known the game would only bring me misery when it started with a sewer level...

Series like Ultima and Final Fantasy were notable in how they tried to innovate with every sequel, while this is pretty much just more Pool of Radiance. More classes, more enemies, more spells, but basically more of the same. Though in Pool of Radiance there's no need to grind first before taking on an area, as if you get stuck you can just go somewhere else for a bit. Curse of the Azure Bonds also lets you chose where you go next, but once you start a chapter the only way out is through. You lose access to shops and training halls, so you can't ID new equipment, you can't sell loot to free up space, and you can't level up. You have to be certain that you're ready... for the challenges you don't know about yet. It's very retro.

I have a feeling that if I'd imported a high level party or looked for some side areas and gotten some levels, I would've had a much better time with this. In fact I've seen people describe the game as being one of the easiest Gold Box RPGs, which is pretty crazy considering that they hadn't introduced difficulty settings yet. 

It does introduce dual classing though! And being able to move and attack with just the arrow keys speeds up combat. Not having to fight 50 enemies every time also speeds up combat... even if the enemies that do turn up are often bastards. But the biggest improvement is the 'Fix' command that lets you automatically cast healing spells in camp. This one feature makes the game so much more bearable... which is why the Gold Box Companion DOSBox add-on retroactively added it to the first game too. The Companion also upgrades this game, letting you automatically memorise spells and optionally bypass the ridiculous level caps stopping you from using the fun class combinations. Plus it lets you add a soundtrack, if you get the latest version from the website. Though even if you don't want any of that, the automap alone is a game changer. That's why I'm not even talking about the other ports.

Gold Box Companion even helps with the journal entries, which are definitely still a thing here. There's a lot of situations where you have to look up the conversation that everyone just had. To be fair, there's also a lot of text inside the game as well, though it's often delivered by messages interrupting you as you're walking around. Plus the story isn't the greatest I've seen in an RPG. Part of the issue I have is that the premise doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would five evil factions with different agendas all put bonds on the same group of heroes at once? Surely their evil plans would get all twisted up. I suppose I can't really judge the logic of a story when I'm only halfway through.

But I think I've seen enough now to say that Curse of the Azure Bonds is not as good as Curse of Monkey Island. (It's better than Heroes of the Lance and Hillsfar though.)

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Thanks for reading! 

There are lots of these Gold Box RPGs still to come, but don't worry the next one won't be coming along for weeks. A month at the least. I won't spoil what I will be playing, but if think you can guess then go ahead.

Or if you just want to talk about Curse of the Azure Bonds, then that's good too!